The More Efficient a Product Becomes, the More Its Owner Will Use It. True/False?

[wtmusic]

An interesting take on a hypothesis I've seen bandied about here from time to time.

"Two recent articles have argued that as the energy efficiency of products improve, it becomes less expensive to operate these products and as a result, people increase their use of these products, increasing energy use and potentially wiping out the energy savings caused by the efficiency gains.

In 'Solid-State Lighting: An Energy-Economics Perspective,' Tsao and his co-authors look at lighting energy use and efficiency over the past 300 years and conclude that over this period, the world spent about 0.72% of its GDP on light. As lighting has improved in efficiency and as incomes have risen, use of light has increased. The authors then extrapolate these trends into the future to conclude 'that there is a massive potential for growth in the consumption of light if new lighting technologies are developed with higher luminous efficacies and lower cost of light.'

Likewise, David Owen, in an article published in The New Yorker entitled 'The Efficiency Dilemma,' notes that ' growing group of economists and others have argued that aren’t coincidental… efforts to improve energy efficiency can more than negate environmental gains…” As support for this idea, he discusses the rising amount of refrigeration and air conditioning since the 1950’s.'"

http://theenergycollective.com/aceee/55991/our-perspective-rebound-effect-it-true-more-efficient-product-becomes-more-its-owner-wil?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

[Confusious]

1. I don't really agree with it

While things might become more used as they become cheaper, they also hit a wall where they can't penetrate the market anymore.

For example, light bulbs. I'm not going to be using my lights all the time. I use them as needed.

[wtmusic]

2. That's pretty much what the author discovered

On big ticket items like A/C and refrigerators, improved efficiency didn't promote use enough to offset the gains. But lower price of the unit itself had a substantial effect.

[napoleon_in_rags]

3. Crazy. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

In the case of direct rebound, the increased use will almost always be facilitating economic gain on increased quality of living. Yes the gas efficient car makes you drive more, but most people don't drive in circles because they have a Prius - they are getting more done with their extra driving. And the indirect case clearly means economic gain, as the article states.

So why even question this? Are they really putting the cart before the horse and aiming for a "low energy use society"? I hope not. The goal is to sustainably grow the economy and facilitate higher standards of living, while also being prepared to survive a lower energy society should the bad times arrive. Increased efficiency contributes to all of this, people should squash the demoralizing idea that it doesn't help whenever they hear it. To me it sounds like a lazy excuse to stick to the status quo rather than innovating new solutions.

[txlibdem]

4. Since Energy Star was one of the only survivors of President Carter's environmental policies

And that happened in 1979 IIRC, I'm not quite sure how they can study 300 years of anything. 300 years ago we were cooking everything over a wood fire. Who needs supplemental light when the fire is right there?

While I agree that uninformed, unintelligent people may use more energy to make up for the savings due to efficiency I can only accept that this will be a tiny minority of people. After all, you pay far more for the more efficient bulbs than the old incandescent bulbs.

"The rising amount of refrigeration and air conditioning?" Try global climate change to answer that question, that and millions of people moving into more inhospitable climes such as southern california, texas, florida, Las Vegas, etc.